A Peace River teacher was suspended without pay after he left a box of carving knives unattended in his classroom, and in a separate incident allowed students to run around a park alone during a P.E. class.

According the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch, Richard Andy George Roderick Payne left an unsecured box of 20 carving knives in his classroom on May 3, 2017.

His students had unlimited access to the knives for about two hours until the principal and another teacher found them and took them out of the room.

When Payne couldn’t find the knives, he didn’t report it to the school.

A few days later, on May 9, he allowed his physical education class to go on a run in a public park with no supervision.

The kids ran for anywhere from seven minutes to half an hour while Payne waited on a bench back at the school for his students to return.

When questioned about it by officials with the Peace River South School District, Payne said he hadn’t supervised a run for years.

As a result of both infractions, the district has issued him a letter of discipline, suspended him for four days without pay, and ordered him to take a course on creating a positive learning environment.

Payne appears to still have his teacher’s certificate, even though he has been disciplined many times before.

In March 2011, he was reprimanded after admitting he pulled a student from his chair and hit him in the arm.

In October of the same year, he was again reprimanded following allegations that he’d broken a metre stick over a student’s back.

In 2012, Payne was issued a letter of discipline after allegations of inappropriate physical contact with students.

In 2014, Payne was suspended for one day after allegations of physical contact with a student.

A BC Teacher Regulation Branch magazine said that the 2014 offence involved grabbing female Grade 8 student’s face and blowing on her nose, making her “very uncomfortable.”

Some of the previous offences included “joking around, poking or mock tasering students and hugging a student.”